rgeos bugs with gDistance function

Question

I can't use the gDistance function of rgeos without a R crash even when I used the example script:

pt1 = readWKT("POINT(0.5 0.5)")
pt2 = readWKT("POINT(2 2)")
gDistance(pt1,pt2,T)

 *** caught segfault ***
address (nil), cause 'unknown'

Traceback:
 1: .Call("rgeos_distance", .RGEOS_HANDLE, spgeom1, spgeom2,byid, PACKAGE = "rgeos")
 2: RGEOSDistanceFunc(spgeom1, spgeom2, byid, "rgeos_distance")
 3: gDistance(pt1, pt2, T)

R version 3.3.1 (2016-06-21) -- "Bug in Your Hair"

rgeos version: 0.3-19, (SVN revision 524) GEOS runtime version: 3.5.0-CAPI-1.9.0 r0 Linking to sp version: 1.2-3

Anyone have an idea ?

Edit: sessionInfo() gives

R version 3.3.1 (2016-06-21)
Platform: x86_64-redhat-linux-gnu (64-bit)
Running under: Scientific Linux release 6.6 (Carbon)

I just tested gBuffer and it does not work as well

pt1 = readWKT("POINT(0.5 0.5)")
gBuffer(pt1)

 *** caught segfault ***
address (nil), cause 'unknown'

Traceback:
 1: .Call("rgeos_buffer", .RGEOS_HANDLE, spgeom, byid, id, width,     quadsegs, capStyle, joinStyle, mitreLimit, PACKAGE = "rgeos")
 2: gBuffer(pt1)

Edit2 : I did some additional tests : the problem occurs whatever the rgeos version I use. When I use geos version <3.4.2 gDistance produces this error:

GeometryComponentFilter.cpp:35: virtual void    geos::geom::GeometryComponentFilter::filter_ro(const geos::geom::Geometry*): Assertion `0' failed. Abandon

while gBuffer(pt1) works ! As rcs wrote, this error has been reported (and seems unsolved) stat.ethz.ch/pipermail/r-sig-geo/2015-February/022311.html

For version >3.5.0 neither gDistance nor gBuffer work but no error mess is outputted (only the segfault, see above)

Edit 3: I tried to go through the C-code of rgeos and I noticed that the segfault appears in this function:

GEOSGeom rgeos_xy2Pt(SEXP env, double x, double y)

where

s = GEOSCoordSeq_create_r(GEOShandle, (unsigned int) 1, (unsigned int) 2);

return an empty pointer that causes the segfault in

GEOSCoordSeq_setX_r(GEOShandle, s, 0, x)

Answer 1

No problem on Fedora 24 with gcc 6.1.1, GEOS 3.5.0 installed from source.

If you believe what you wrote about the location of the problem, r525 protects s, testing against NULL (I hope). Install rgeos after checking the source out from R-Forge.

r# are SVN revisions (obvious for all pre-gits), and refer to discrete revisions to the source repository - they are not OS-specific.

The OP needs to ensure that rgeos is really linking to the GEOS used for installation, I suspect multiple binary GEOS installs on the LD PATH.

Report back only on R-sig-geo, if the OP deigns to post.

Main take-away, RHEL/CENTOS 6 is EOL, especially if you install dependencies binary.